Eric's Links

March 18, 2007

The Gaskets

The 8 p.m. time slot at SXSW can be a tough one for acts. People who spent all day seeing bands at private parties are out getting dinner or meeting up for drinks or napping before jumping into the evening schedule.

So it was a less-than-capacity crowd that gathered Saturday at 8 in a converted movie house on 6th Street to see the Gaskets, a scruffy electro-rock duo from Virginia. Although it didn't escape their notice -- the pair couldn't resist heckling people lolling on couches in a lounge area -- Teddy Blanks and Ross Harman treated the audience to wildly energetic set of booty-shaking tunes that came entirely from a sequencer.

"We are here to rock your pants," Harman (below, left) announced at the start of the show.

Blanks and Harman played off each other like a pair of hyper-intelligent (and hyper) teens who get jacked up on Mountain Dew, tinker with electronics and try to crack each other up. They jumped around, danced at each other and played air guitar on songs that required no actual instruments on stage. Many of the Gaskets' tunes are about money, specifically cynical takes on their lack of it, and they threw in a cover of George Harrison's "Got My Mind Set on You" for good measure ("It's gonna take plenty of money," one lyric goes).

The duo's sense of humor is everywhere on its songs, but Blanks and Harman are more than just comic relief. They're making smart, catchy music that's tough to resist — see for yourself March 23 when the duo performs a free show at Sweet Jane's in Hartford.